Hidden quantum gravity in 4D Feynman diagrams: emergence of spin foams

Aristide Baratin, Laurent Freidel
2007 Classical and quantum gravity  
We show how Feynman amplitudes of standard QFT on flat and homogeneous space can naturally be recast as the evaluation of observables for a specific spin foam model, which provides dynamics for the background geometry. We identify the symmetries of this Feynman graph spin foam model and give the gauge-fixing prescriptions. We also show that the gauge-fixed partition function is invariant under Pachner moves of the triangulation, and thus defines an invariant of four-dimensional manifolds.
more » ... y, we investigate the algebraic structure of the model, and discuss its relation with a quantization of 4d gravity in the limit where the Newton constant goes to zero.
doi:10.1088/0264-9381/24/8/007 fatcat:7tmv72cxqzfktpbbepiuwycqeq